Isogen 5

I’m a fan of personal eve online guides. The out of game content is what keeps me IN game, when it comes to EVE. Out of game content can vary from simple databases, to web blog testimonials with fan fiction mixed in. I’m an absolute fan of nearly all of it. I wanted to give you an insider’s perspective on WH hunting. Either as a guide so you could become a better hunter, or perhaps a guide so you could not become a victim. Whichever way you view it, the more people in W-space the more for me to fight. For those of you who feel I shouldn’t divulge trade secrets, F U don’t be a P.

Rage Rolling: This is the activity of a hostel group of people chain collapsing the static exit of a WH they occupy in order to find unsuspecting targets.

------------- How it’s done -------

Every WH has a very specific amount of mass that can pass through it before it collapses. When that hole collapses and it’s your worm holes static exit, a brand new shiny exit to a totally random new place becomes scan-able and thus collapsible. Every active worm hole dweller should know the formula to collapse their static at every stage of its life span.

Once your new hole is open, a single cloaky scanner should jump though. Even if you have multiple people rolling the hole with you, just a single person should jump through. Less chance that scanning parties could be seen on the other side. DO NOT DROP PROBES right away, these can also be seen by the marks.

If you are the scanner steps in order of importance.

1.Bookmark the hole you just passed through. (seems like a no brainer because when seconds count and you do stuff out of order, things get forgotten)

2. Check your distance from the hole you just passed through. For whatever reason CCP feels it’s cool for you to be spit out sometimes right on top of the exit you just passed through, often times so close that you can’t instant cloak. This is how a lot of cloaky haulers die in w-holes. If you find yourself inside the distance required (2k) to activate your cloak, calmly find the direction of you vs. the hole and go the opposite way. Easy way of doing this without looking is to click orbit… whatever… Your ship instantly goes the opposite direction of the hole. Once at the correct distance, cloak up.

3. D-Scan 360 at max scan range. These are the ONLY things you should have on your overview for W-Space hunting. Make a tab, seconds count in wormholes. a. Ships – duh

b. POSs – Not any of the components .. just POS towers.

c. Force fields—You would think this went with POS’s, but it doesn’t. W-Space if filled with conflict and towers run dry, I personally have scooped up many ship floating in a unfueled POS.

d. Wrecks—This will tell you almost instantly what the Mark hole inhabitants are doing.1- 3 wrecks on scan usually means someone just cleared a Ladar or Grav site. More than that, depending on class of the worm hole results may vary. But wrecks on scan means someone is going to come for them. Sleepers are a pain in the ass to kill and it’s the primary reason people come to W Holes. Basically its floating isk that someone is planning to collect.

e. Containers jettison and stationary—One Mrym at a ladar site is bait. One Mrym at a ladar site with a jet can is an easy mark. That being said, all baiting mrym pilots just jet out a cap booster. Jet cans can tell a great deal about possible targets. The fact that there is even one on scan means there was some one active in a target within an hour or so.

f. Warp bubbles—Many a scanner has died warping to take a peek at a POS only to end up in a warp bubble and de-cloaked by anchored containers. Don’t be that guy. Planets and Sun— Marks panic and when marks panic they warp to a planet/sun. Don’t know why… they just do. Also triangulating a solo hauler near a planet will tell you right off the bat the person is doing PI. Don’t try and catch him at that planet, try and catch him at the next. A PI target isn’t checking d-scan as often as he should. He has his Planet map thing up and is trying to hurry and get back to a POS as quick as he can. Simply making an educated guess as to the next planet he will make in his rounds will get you that PI mark kill.

g. Probes—Probes being on scan will tell you if someone is active in the hole or not. Remember all probes have a limited life span meaning someone either forgot them and collapsed the hole and left them (not likely ) or someone is actively controlling them. Either way, someone is alive in this hole and there is pew to be had.

4.Bring up a website that will give you at a glance exactly what kind of hole you are in. I personally use www.eveeye.com, though I have used others. When eveeye loads, (as long as its trusted to you) it will tell you critical info

a. Type of worm hole – AKA types of effects. Each effect will determine the type of ships you bring to the part. Bringing a armor fleet to a pulsar is seldom repeated.

b. How active the hole has been in the previous 48hrs. High NPC deaths recently will tell you activity levels.

c. What kind of exit to the hole is known.

5. Once D-Scan comes up either empty or occupied warp around the system cloaked. Check every corner of that bad boy, some of these worm holes are REALLY big, and a group of miners could be in one of the far corners of the target system. You start dropping probes and checking for exits, you’re going to spook them. Get your mini map out and warp around, make sure there aren’t any hidden treasures before you even come close to dropping probes. Once the hole is deemed “non-active” then give the OK to bring in the rest of your scanner fleet. This entire process shouldn’t take more than about 1 min, sometimes less depending on the size of the hole.

Read more of my ramblings on my blog www.invadingyourhole.blogspot.com

I’m going to list some of the more common targets I come across. Each has a very direct way of dealing with it. Each type of ship used in a WH has a very specific task, oddly there is little variation to these rules. With these rules you can narrow down your targets actions and better predict what he is and will do, ensuring a better attempt to kill ratio. These are rough guidelines and there are exceptions to every rule, so please don’t post a response to this with the exception. Got your own opinions?.. post on your own guide.

Ship on scan:

Tengu- 2 or less in a c3 or less. They are running anomalies. Rarely do they run Radar or mag sites unless they are clearing it for another ship. Tengu are shield ships and removing tank for bear mods on a 1+ billion isk ship is a bad idea, seldom repeated. 4 or more and a cargo container in a c4+ and they are clearing sites. This is done when all Tengu orbit a jet can around 5k and rep each other.

Loki—If you see a single or group of loki on scan, he is partner of a bigger fleet. Typical uses for loki are holding ships so dreds can insta blap them. Rarely are these ships used as scanning solo ship. They simply don’t have the dps for effective solo work in a WH.

Proteus—Solo proteus is always a scanner. Be careful these guys can put out 530dps with a 60k tank while scanning/cloaky fit. Multiple proteus means someone is dead or about to die. In WHs proteus are used as DPS and Tank, almost always close range. Never active tanked always buffer. These ships are never used for PVE in a wh. If you’re doing this… you’re doing it wrong.

Legion—Legions are a mixed bag. Always used for pvp, never pve. Solo legion on scan means scanner… multiple.. .see proteus.

Battle ships – Battle ships in wormholes are used for pvp. Plain and simple. Due to WH mass reasons and the invention of tier 3 battle crusiers massive battle ship fleets are used for POS bash/defense only. You won’t come across any hell cat fleets in a worm hole. A common WH battleship you will see quite often is a baalgorn, but they will never be solo. PVE is almost unheard of in a battleship. If you see one on scan, he is likely Posed up or on a hole about to collapse it.

T2 Battle cruiser: Always used in PVP, though I have seen the odd arty fit Sleipner in an anomaly or two.

Tier 2 Battle cruiser: PVP only, and nearly always in a POS bash. Sometimes they are brought in with gangs, but never the point ship, too many other ships do it better for the same mass.

T1 Battle cruiser: These ships are the bread and butter of most wormhole dwellers. Everyone in a c3 and lower will be using to run sites, clear gas, pvp.. whatever. No real rules for these, but you can without a doubt know, that if the suspect battle cruiser normally uses drones, it’s not doing PVE. T2 Cruisers: Rarely used in PVE. See any on scan and you can safely assume someone, somewhere is being hunted.

T1 Cruisers and smaller ships –Always PVP.

The reason it’s important to note which ship is used commonly for pvp and which is used for pve will determine how you go about looking for them. Remember they can’t see you, so they will be doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing.

PVE people will be at a POS or site. These people don’t linger on holes waiting for you come along. During your first few directional scans you can determine exactly if the PVE ship is at his POS or not. IF he isn’t, he is at a site. Narrowing down which one can be fairly simple, here is how.

1. Get your target down to a 15% directional.

2. Perform a quick scan of all anomalies.

3. Through process of elimination simply activate a warp to each one, canceling instantly once direction of the anomaly is determined.

4. Warp in at 100 to the anomaly that best fits the direction of your 15% scan.

Once on grid (when you see their ship) with the target, simply book mark a wreck/can near them. Call in the fleet, don’t wait for the corp BMs to update, just have the fleet boss make you boss and use the warp fleet to your new found bookmark.

Just like that you killed someone without using your probes and not being on scan for greater than a few seconds.

Now if you find your target isn’t at an anomaly by using the above process. The next steps can be a bit tricky.

1. Narrow down your targets location within just a few AU. The closer the better. You can do this by slowly lowering the range of your scan till the target ships disappear. This is after you get them to 15% directional.

2. Warp to the farthest edge of the wormhole to get away from your targets scan range.

3. Swap out your probes from core to combat.

4. Launch combat probes. I personally use 5, but we got guys in our alliance who are so good I think they can do it with 2 or 3.

5. Immediately cloak back up and warp your probes as far off the space map as possible away from your mark. Remember these guys can d-scan for combats too.

6. Get your combats in the correct scanning cluster you feel you need. Most combat pilots in our alliance can do this in 1 scan pass. If the marks are very small or are ECCM fit, it can take as many as 3. If you can’t combat scan a ship down in 1 pass after having him on a 15% directional, have one of the big kids with you do it for you. It’s not worth losing the kill for.

7. Once you have him at 100% suck in your probes and warp to 100, book mark a wreck/can and call in the cav.

This is the quick and dirty on how to gank a PVE target. Let’s go a few steps farther.

Read more of my ramblings on my blog www.invadingyourhole.blogspot.com

Let’s say, you killed the PVE ships, or they got away or someone jumped the gun and the targets got wise to what’s going on. The people your attempting to fight don’t know you unless they have physically seen you and since you just opened the hole to their home they haven’t a damn clue. How they react after almost getting ganked will tell you exactly how the next few minutes will go. If they warp to a pos and log off, good chance this bear don’t want to fight. If they swap to a Hic and the rest of their fleet gets into battleships or something, they plain on closing this new aggressive hole you created in their home. How you deal with what they bring out after a failed gank is the fun that is worm holes… people get creative. Some of our favored activities are convincing people we are invading them.. they then pay us to leave. Actually invading them is also a used tactic, it all ready depends on your crew.

If you come across PVP ships. Here are some tactics you can use to ‘get a fight’ out of them.

1. Baiting – Baiting only works if your bait is convincing to the people willing to bite. Remember you started this impromptu combat session, you are in control.

a. Making convincing bait—Why would a drake be sitting 0 on a sun? Everyone knows that’s bait. BUT a drake in a c2 at an anomaly creating wrecks, that’s MUCH better.

b. The pilot of the bait is critical. He is going to be checked for kill records, corp/alliance status. Make sure it’s not a NPC corp.. people know that’s bait. Be sure to put him in a corp that has a tendency to lose fights but fight none the less. THIS is the best bait. Insure that the kills he has been on are not with say… “ducks”…

2. Putting up a Pos— Nothing makes people go from “0 – Pissed off and willing to fight” than erecting a POS in their hole. Even a small POS with no modules that costs almost nothing can be the focal point for much scrambling and stupid choices.

In the off chance you are Rage Rolling your hole and come across multiple caps and many active pilots. So many that you and your gang can’t possibly take them in their home. These things happen. There are some very large worm hole alliances stuffed into some very small active holes. This little trick was taught to us by AHARM.

Story goes like this, AHARM rolled our static. Instantly knowing it was ours. They then pushed a cap though it with a cloak and waited. We “rather slowly I’m afraid” discovered we had a new signature in our hole. Our scout jumps though and sees nobody on the hole but does note its AHARMs hole. Not having the fleet to deal with them at the moment, the call was made to close the hole. Still the cloak capital waited, just off the hole. Our closing ships warped to the hole with the scout on the other side giving us the all clear. We proceeded in jumping the closing ships though, still the cloaked cap waited. Waited till his scout on the other side confirmed the last of the battle ships had jumped and the hole was crit. The cloaked cap then jumps back through to his AHARM hole trapping the closing cap on their side of the newly closed worm hole. High five to AHARM for teaching us this…. You guys are innovators and hats off to you.

Well those are some of the basics. I may update or edit this in the future and add or remove stuff. Hope you enjoyed the read.

Read more of my ramblings on my blog www.invadingyourhole.blogspot.com

Justified Chaos

Spaceship Bebop

a. Making convincing bait—Why would a drake be sitting 0 on a sun? Everyone knows that’s bait. BUT a drake in a c2 at an anomaly creating wrecks, that’s MUCH better.

b. The pilot of the bait is critical. He is going to be checked for kill records, corp/alliance status. Make sure it’s not a NPC corp.. people know that’s bait. Be sure to put him in a corp that has a tendency to lose fights but fight none the less. THIS is the best bait. Insure that the kills he has been on are not with say… “ducks”…

l disagree with this part, sometimes, a loki slowboating away from a wormhole is all it takes, even if it's got the ducks tag!

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a. Making convincing bait—Why would a drake be sitting 0 on a sun? Everyone knows that’s bait. BUT a drake in a c2 at an anomaly creating wrecks, that’s MUCH better.

b. The pilot of the bait is critical. He is going to be checked for kill records, corp/alliance status. Make sure it’s not a NPC corp.. people know that’s bait. Be sure to put him in a corp that has a tendency to lose fights but fight none the less. THIS is the best bait. Insure that the kills he has been on are not with say… “ducks”…

l disagree with this part, sometimes, a loki slowboating away from a wormhole is all it takes, even if it's got the ducks tag!

True, I agree. "You don't go fishing for sharks with a can of worms"

Read more of my ramblings on my blog www.invadingyourhole.blogspot.com

Garoun Investment Bank

Gallente Federation

1. Battleships. Many groups use Battleships to help clear the first round of a capital escalation. And unless its a capital gank, few ever move them out of home for PVP. So BS with a carrier is quite likely a pve op.

3. Teir 1 BCs. For pvp? Most pvp BCs are the teir 2s, Drakes and Canes. Most teir 1s are gassers. If you see a cyclone on scan, its probably not trying to gank you...

4. T1 cruisers. See #3. Many people use t1 cruisers to gas with, because they do the job and are disposable if things hit the fan. If you're living in a wormhole and so poor you're using tech 1 cruisers to pvp, you are doing something seriously wrong.

Cinnabun Guns

Very well thought out guide. I am sure to read and re-read this one. I like the break-down of ship types. I for one wont go from planet 1 to planet 2 to planet 3 in the future in my PI ship I saw myself there...

It is well that war is so terrible -- lest we should grow too fond of it. - Robert E. Lee

Brutor Tribe

Minmatar Republic

My experience is that ship types are used more widely than you're suggesting ... especially battleships, basic battlecruisers, and tech-3s ... but that's not a show-stopper unless ppl put too much weight on the ship type to decide what the intended victim might be doing.

I guess I am almost a 'vet' by now. Hopefully not too bitter and managing to help more than I hinder.
Our pirate epic arc completion packages really are very good: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=12973&find=unread

Flowery Twats

Good read, mate. A bit sweeping in some of your statements regarding the marks and what they're doing.. but if you put the word "Generally" at the front of each, you're in the pink

For dualboxers/small corps who arent afraid to engage a couple of marks in their static with 2-3 ships of their own, there are some other more detailed tips.. I'm gonna wait & see if anyone brings them to the thread..

Ministry of War

Amarr Empire

This is one of the best posts I’ve seen on wormhole fun, and everything everyone had to add is also good and correct. Nothing is a for sure thing, and I have been running worm holes for a long time and I do most of them solo, not by choice at first, but because of time zone with the rest of my corporation members. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. I started doing things I would have never done without support, but I soon found out that most people that you hunt down in a wormhole are not prepared to fight and you end up winning fights that you really shouldn’t have. Flying in on, 2 or 3 Drakes plexing and killing one, then warp out. Or, 2 Drakes a Tengu, Loki, Myrm and killing the Noctis right in front of them, because most are not set up for a point while plexing, why? They are out making Isk, and need the tank. Now does this work every time? NO! There is always the exception. But you will never find out unless you try. Its fun and you find out you can do more than you think you can.

PVE people will be at a POS or site. These people don’t linger on holes waiting for you come along. During your first few directional scans you can determine exactly if the PVE ship is at his POS or not. IF he isn’t, he is at a site. Narrowing down which one can be fairly simple, here is how.

1. Get your target down to a 15% directional.

2. Perform a quick scan of all anomalies.

3. Through process of elimination simply activate a warp to each one, canceling instantly once direction of the anomaly is determined.

4. Warp in at 100 to the anomaly that best fits the direction of your 15% scan.

You don't need to do this, as it wastes time. Once you've scanned all the anoms they appear on the F10 map, and you can locate the right one very quickly by using your DSCAN within the map screen. Then you need only warp once, to the right site

There are other nitpicks too (such as Tier 2 BCs being PVP only, the Drake/Hurricane/Myrm get used a lot in sites .... not to mention the Nighthawk) but I'll leave others to quibble.

Nice guide.

EDIT: OH, and use 7 probes to combat scan a dude.No, "2 or 3" won't be much fun for you

"Do not touch anything unnecessarily. Beware of pretty girls in dance halls and parks who may be spies, as well as bicycles, revolvers, uniforms, arms, dead horses, and men lying on roads -- they are not there accidentally." -Soviet infantry manual, issued in the 1930